An ongoing effort to protect a shared river drainage on the BC-Montana border from mining damage will not inhibit recreational users, hunters or logging activity, Montana’s senior senator promises.

According to a statement from Sen. Max Baucus, D-Montana, the North Fork Watershed Protection Act would solidify an agreement between Montana and British Columbia to prohibit new mining and energy exploration in the million-acre northern Flathead River basin, which extends across the Canadian line. As part of the American contribution, federal leases for coal and oil extraction in the area would be rescinded. About 80 percent of them have already been voluntarily surrendered.

It’s a big moment for the senator, who first introduced legislation to have the Flathead listed as a “Wild and Scenic River” in 1975.

“We owe it to our kids and grandkids to protect the North Fork on all fronts – through legislation and by working hard to get oil and gas companies to retire their leases in the North Fork without asking taxpayers to pick up the tab,” Baucus said, calling the North Fork region both “a pillar of Montana’s outdoor heritage” and an “economic driver” for the state. Montana’s junior senator, Jon Tester, also a Democrat, is a co-sponsor.

Opponents decry the move as a government “land grab” and say the act will damage Montana’s economic interests. In a scathing post, Poly Montana’s Ed Berry argued that the bill has already harmed the state because of energy companies returning leases on roughly 200,000 acres in the Flathead. Passing the bill, Berry said, would cut jobs and tax revenues from mining and oil and gas exploration in the region.

John Frederick, president of the North Fork Preservation Association, a local conservation group, said the most recent drilling attempt in the area happened around 1984.

“There’s no oil or gas here. That was figured out by the U.S. Geological Survey almost 20 years ago,” he said. “It was dry. They went down 11,000 feet and didn’t find anything.”

The bill, Frederick said, is simply the American end of a “gentleman’s agreement” to halt, and prevent, resource exploitation in the Flathead. Canada has already done its part—and with coal on their side, and likely oil and gas, Canadians have more to lose.

“The oil and gas folks have been giving up their leases, so this is more for the future, to make the Canadians happy,” Frederick said. “They’re giving up stuff; we should be giving up stuff, too.”

Concern about mining activities in key watersheds is well founded. The Denver Post reported recently that the western states are home to an estimated 500,000 abandoned mines, and toxic runoff from them has polluted about 40 percent of the river headwaters in the area. In Colorado alone, waste leaked from about 450 vacant mines have contaminated an estimated 1,300 miles’ worth of the state’s waterways with arsenic, zinc, cadmium and more. However, the mines responsible for that damage comprise only about 6 percent of Colorado’s empty mines.

It’s worth protecting the Flathead, Frederick said, because the area, which is sparsely populated and has never been fully developed, remains remarkably well insulated from invasive species.

“We have all the same critters that were here when Lewis & Clark got in the neighborhood,“ Frederick said. “That’s saying a lot: grizzly bears, wolves, wolverines. No cows up here at all, just a handful of horses, and I have two of them.”

The Flathead’s history is unique, too, in that despite years of attempts by private companies to explore the region, no full-scale production of any energy resource has ever taken place there, Baucus told the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources in May. Even major energy players ConocoPhillips and Chevron have signed on as supporters.

The Senate’s Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests held hearings on the bill May 25 but took no further action.